


The Precious Few

by Nicole Crucial (moilArchitect)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moilArchitect/pseuds/Nicole%20Crucial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You start a dream journal.</p><p>The first words are,</p><p>'There are precious few of us who dream of true darkness.'</p><p>And then, they read,</p><p>'By few, I mean two. But two is not alone.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Precious Few

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kallie, currently known as bubbletier @ tumblr. Merry Christmas, sweetie, and happy crackshipping!

There are precious few who have the privilege of being chosen by the Noble Circle. This is a thought that provides such hollow comfort, but comfort nonetheless, when you wake up in the middle of the night with pinprick-pupils and sweat slicking the small of your back, your sheets, your hair, your nightclothes, filled with a horror so profound it is quite literally not of this world. They are vengeful gods, and this you knew, but you did not know nearly well enough. You wonder when you can breathe again (it is a long, long time) whether knowing this would have stopped them from wrapping you in their grasp of fragile pseudo-autonomy and malicious pleas.

Precious few are those like you. It is such a terrible, terrible gift.

You wander halls for days on end with books clutched in your arms, flotation devices in a sea of nightdark tendrils curling at the edges of your consciousness; you stay awake until you pass out from literal exhaustion--longer and longer every time. You are building up a tolerance; you are becoming immune to sleep.

You watch your bones grow stark under your paper-pale skin; you watch the dark, deep bags under your eyes grow darker and deeper still; perpetually, your mouth is cotton-filled and your eyes are heavier than the Green Sun that burns bright behind them whenever you blink.

You are dying. You are killing yourself and you are being slowly murdered, in sharp, shattering bursts that coincide with the hours that follow your endless, fruitless quest to stay awake.  Nothing even your dearest friends do can stop you, because you are on a stubborn and set path to obliteration.

You are one of precious few, and it is killing you, and you are beginning to think that you don't mind.

Weeks, months pass, maybe years, you've lost track of time if it doesn't involve noting how long you've been able to survive without sleep. You begin to feel your bones creak, your ribs pressing against your clothes, your head throbbing constantly. Suddenly and in slow motion, you are on the floor, and a fluorescent lavender pen rolls out of your grasp and across the floor.

You feel the slime of blackdeath writhing on your neck and you know.

You know that they have come for you.

For there are so precious few like you; they do not have the privilege of regular digestion.

Everything fades. Your mental preparations for your own personal Hell were already in progress, but…

Fingers. Cold but not as freezing as _their_ touch. They skim at your arms, cup your face, and there is soft, hot breath on your cheeks that smells like decay and the sea. Of a sudden there are lips on yours that taste of dead flesh and sand, and salty water is filling your lungs and you cough and hack and choke and retch, and when it is all expelled and you are panting hard, you realize you can breathe again--really _breathe--for_ the first time in ages.

For the first time in ever.

You suck in the air that smells like no ocean you've ever been to and open your eyes. All you see is red, and for a moment your whole body seizes as you think that this is the color of the Furthest Ring. But no--the Furthest Ring is dark, so dark there is no color to describe it, nor is there space that can be colored or quantified, nor is there an existence to which color can stick. Your second thought is blood, which, to your own mild bemusement and disgust, is not actually all that alarming to you.

But the sea of red is too smooth to have been let from some poor fool's veins and you realize it is the color of the fading sunset in a very strange place.

You ache all over, but it is the first bodily sensation you have registered in days--weeks--and you are glad to feel it. You sit up slowly and agonizingly and roll your shoulders; register a great, dark sea, a beach that is flawlessly clear, and a great white creature dying slowly, floating sickeningly on the surface of the water. You do not pay the dying lusus much attention other than to notice that you somehow know what it's called.

The hair on your neck--grown long and unruly by now--prickles, and you look to your right. There is a troll girl, short and stocky, fins at her jaw, her skin a gray that shines with satiny wetness. Her shirt bears the sign of the constellation Peixes in tyrian purple--what you have learned to be the most regal of blood colors--and her skirt in two oceany shades wraps loosely around her long, powerful legs. A great trident (a 2x3dent) lies near her, and her hair is long, wavy, and damp. She is smiling a smile that is intimidating for the number of razor-sharp teeth concealed within, and when she turns to look at you, she is wearing a gilded tiara, and goggles that only serve to highlight her dead eyes.

You swallow the cotton out of your mouth and whisper, "You--are Feferi."

She nods and smiles at the bleeding red on the sky. "And you're Rose!"

You hesitate, then nod in tandem. "Why are we here?"

Because you have no glubbin' idea how to play nice with the cods!"

You are too disoriented to take any offense to this accusation, not that you necessarily would under normal circumstances; besides, she is cheerful as she says it, reclining to lean on her arms.

"They are not the easiest deities to get along with."

"Rose,  _you_  are knot the easiest _gill_  to get along with. They are not trying to make fins ruff on you, but it's hard enough for them to be gentle even without you being so porpoisefully beachy and antagonistic." She gives you a hard look.

You rub your head. "Feferi, I understand that you might be slightly biased, considering what I know of your lusus--"

"Aw, clam up, would you? I've min-nown them for so much longer than you, and not just my lusus! They are knot that scary! Didn't you shell your friends that once?"

That was before you knew what it meant to be grimdark.

"Regardless of our differing opinions," you manage brusquely, "I owe you my gratitude. I believe I am not incorrect in assuming that you saved my life."

"Shore did. You're not scheduled for krilling just yet."

You are not so sure. But you don't particularly want to die, anyway. You spare another look around.

"This is one of your memories?"

Feferi's bright, harsh smile softens a little. "One of my frondest."

You suck in a breath of air that you can only assume to be fresh and Alternian and let a breeze caress your chin. Good thing you are in a dream bubble and not actually here, or you are pretty sure that you would be dead. But for the moment, the memory-clear moment, it is beautiful.

"Feferi."

"Yes, Rose?"

"What will happen if I go to sleep again?"

There's that grin again. "Don't you worry. I had a glub with the Circle. You'll be splashing with me for a while."

You shut your eyes and lean back on the sand. You are safe, at least for as long as Feferi graciously hosts you in her bubbles, separate from the slumbering throes of the horrorterrors.

You are one of precious few to suffer their monstrous defilement, and one of precious fewer to suffer their cloying mercy.

But for once, being one of precious few does not equate to being alone.

 

* * *

  

You sleep peacefully for the first time in forever and when you wake up, you eat half a case of shitty ramen noodles that Dave has managed to alchemize hundreds of. Your brother and Karkat stare openly as you shovel mouthful after mouthful in with as much dainty dignity as possible.

You can tell how worried they were by how they don't say anything for fear that you'll stop.

You gain weight, enough that you can actually begin modeling for Kanaya again without her becoming deeply disturbed by your thinness. You start writing again, after realizing that everything you have penned for the last three months at least is written in the morbid code of the eldritch tongues. Your research picks up once more. You get through tons of reading material and it actually sticks in your mind instead of bouncing off of your sickly gray brain and sliding into an abyss.

You do not say a thing, and neither does anyone else, but you can see it in how the uneasiness fades from their faces, in how they notice that the color of your skin is bright and not grayish-bordering-on-grimdark. You are getting better.

You start a dream journal.

The first words are,

_There are precious few of us who dream of true darkness._

 And then, they read,

_By few, I mean two. But two is not alone._

 You know now that _alone_  gives them their strength. But it is a special kind of alone that comes from knowing something no one else knows.

 Feferi may not understand, for all her years of communing with them, but she knows.

 Oh, does she _know._

 

* * *

 

 

Feferi keeps her promise. Every night--first for just a few hours, then for longer and longer--you sleep, uninterrupted, greeted and sent off by a troll with a smile almost as ready as her wit.

Mostly, they are Feferi's memories: hours spent deep in the ocean where no human should be able to venture that you relish; explorations of fascinating caches of sunken treasure and species unknown to both human- and troll-kind.  She likes to lead you by the hand, and you don't know why, but you let her.

You think the both of you are just a little bit starved for tender touch. But it comes with the territory, when the closest available commodity to such a thing is the brush of a spine-shivering tendril at the nape of your neck.

You study each other closely and curiously. You have never known a seadweller before her, and are surprised to discover how many differences there are. She probably spends a lot of time with Jade, but she claims that you are so different from her that it is like splashing around with a different species entirely.

Feferi is utterly silly. She insists on doing things like having slumber parties, telling scary stories, giving makeovers (which, to both your fascination and chagrin, can actually apply underwater if they are in dream bubbles), and more. Your hair has grown just long enough for her to play with, and there is more than one occasion when you find yourself absently braiding her trailing inky tresses. She has a whole wardrobe full of princess' clothes and a zooful of cuttlefish to--well-- _cuddle_ , and she is absolutely fearless about using them. But you, too, learn how to push her buttons, and one of your most amusing pastimes in dreamland is exasperating her with your dripping sarcasm and resistance to showing any kind of exuberance.

Fish puns begin slipping into your dream journal, and, to your horror and the trolls' as well, into your speech. One such slip-up ends in a clipped but comprehensive briefing to all of the occupants of the meteor and Terezi ordering you to say hello to her delicious juicy purple grape friend, which you do, verbatim.

She is completely ridiculous, mentally exhausting, physically draining, and yet somehow you never tire of her company, and you always wake up energized. She keeps up with your snarky horseshittery by completely disregarding its artistry and boring through you with words as blunt and aggressive as harpoons. You tell yourself that your reluctant enjoyment of her company is based off of a distaste for the alternative provided for the precious few ( _precious two,_  your mind echoes with every repetition).

That's how it is now. You are not one of precious few, but one of precious _two._

One night in her abode, she is wrinkling her nose at some sardonic phrase of yours or another, determined to invade your personal space. Her eyes are bright, the expression on her face is the easy cheer that you envy so deep in your jaded heart, and you realize that a precious two is a precious pair.

You rip her goggles off and kiss her hard, oblivious to the serrated teeth that await. She freezes in surprise, smiles against your mouth, and presses back. In what seems like no more than two seconds you are on top of her; but she is so much more powerful, and rolls to straddle you, tearing her black lips from yours with a grin that's mischievous and uncharacteristically predatory.

"Be careful, Rose," Feferi says as she drags a long nail along your jaw, "or you might make it ruff for  _me_  to be gentle, too."

The conversation was weeks ago but you remember it clearly. The blood stops in your veins and you stare at her, at the way she licks her lips, at the way the shadows in her eyes seem to writhe.

Then you grab her by the shirt and yank her down to kiss her again, feel a dark laugh bubble out of her chest, drag your nails harshly across her skin that won't be broken. You taste blood, and it is not hers. You are only human, but you will rot in every hell the Circle throws at you before you let them have her. You will kiss her so hard that the terrors will ooze out of her skin and slink away into the darkest depths of the sea where they belong.

You are not content with being one of their precious few, not anymore.

They can't have you. _Either_  of you.

When you wake up, you suck in a shuddering sigh and thank any god but _them_  that bruises and bitemarks from dreams do not carry over to reality.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time she sees what she's done to your frail, pale body, she is absolutely beside herself. You tell her to shut up because it's your fault, and anyway, this is only your dream body. She cups your face with an expression that haunts you in its wisdom, and tells you that you still don't understand the power of dreams, you never have.

You kiss her, softly this time because dream bodies can be sore, and tug softly at her tangled hair. "I know enough," you say.

You know enough to bother with kissing an eccentric dead seadweller with shadows deeply hidden behind her bright white eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes the two of you end up in one of your memories. For some reason your memories always invite de ja vu, and long moments where you don't yet realize you're dreaming. She is stark contrast, vibrant and colorful against what usually ends up as white carpets and whiter walls and cavernous hallways, and yet she fits into your memory like a puzzle piece. You suppose this reflects on your mind as a whole: how she fits there so easily. You have observed well enough that she has a way of diving straight into peoples' hearts and lives, even when she's dead, and you suppose that you were a little silly and a little narcissistic in the beginning to think that you would be immune. But silly and narcissistic are words that, different as they are, describe you fairly well.

Most of the time in your memory-bubbles, the two of you are left to explore your monstrous house, and when you are dreaming it seems like the place has the same amount of depth as Feferi's beloved ocean. You do not actually remember it this way, of course, but dragging your nails along the walls as you roam through the corridors with her is somehow therapeutic. Feferi scolds you because you're leaving marks.

They are dark marks, black marks, marks that writhe in your fingers' wake; they are marks that precious few fingertips make. You draw your hand from the walls and remember not to touch the seams of your dreams again, lest they fall to pieces around you.

Fingers on walls leave marks like tendrils on consciousness, and your psyche is still in the recovery ward.

Instead, she leads you by the hand like she always has, even though she has no idea where she's going.

Feferi loves your house like she loves no other adventure destination, because it gives her a chance to explore things that are human and things that are mundane. Bringing her into a room is like turning on the lights in the evening, or splashing neon-colored paint on the ceiling. Color in this house of whites and grays and purples forces breath into your lungs, though your time in dream sea has taught you to forgo the habit of inhalation while asleep.

One night, you find yourselves atop the observatory, so close to the stars you can almost touch them. You point out each of the constellations that represent the trolls that created your universe.

"Aradia," she says.

"Aries," you respond, your index finger drifting to a different array of pinprick lights.

So it goes.

Tavros (Taurus). Sollux (Gemini). Karkat (Cancer). Nepeta (Leo). Kanaya (Virgo). Terezi (Libra). Vriska (Scorpio).Equius (Sagittarius). Gamzee (Capricorn). Eridan (Aquarius).

"Me?"

"Pisces."

Laughter bubbles out of her. (It always "bubbles" out of her, of course.) "That sounds just like my reel name."

"Indeed it does."

She laces her fingers with yours and you close your eyes.

A moment later you are awake.

You wonder what the stars are like in the universe you created, and if you, like Feferi, will be dead before you see them.

 

* * *

 

 

Your meteormates begin to notice how much you are sleeping.

"It would seem that I am making up for lost time," you say.

It is a lie, but it is a lie that makes them go quiet.

You are one of precious few, and you are slowly beginning to accept this: that it will mean sleepless nights, and horribleterrible dreams, and page upon page of eldritch tongues scrawled in ink that smells too much like blood.

It will mean battles untold, on the playing field of your very mind.

After all, you cannot stay peaceful like this forever; it's not in your nature.

But your friends, for your sake and theirs, like to pretend it is.

You decide to be kind, and let them believe.

You prefer Feferi's pretense, anyway; she wears it like a shimmering ballgown as they wear theirs like a worn and lightless shield.

Feferi's only pretense is that they do not want to devour every ounce of autonomy she possesses.

You decide to be kind, and let her believe.

Even though you both know she would believe it with or without your consent, just as she does everything else.

 

* * *

 

 

They begin to creep in at the seams of your dreams. A shadow darting just out of sight here; a freezing caress on the back of your neck there. _Be still, my beating heart,_  you command yourself with every ounce of the sardonic irony that would make Dave proud, and you try to remember that this is what it means to be one of precious few.

Feferi pretends not to notice every crack in the reality of your world. Her shimmering gown of a pretense dulls with uncertainty.

One day a shadowdark tendril grips you around the ankle and pulls, hard. You go down and feel your elbows slam into the floor, feel it drag you towards a deep dark hole, and you can't breathe.

 _"Rose!"_ she screeches, beside herself, diving after you.

"Fuck. No," you hiss, and you claw her hands free from you, remembering a vow you made to yourself weeks ago. _Every hell they throw at you, Lalonde, every single one._

You grit your teeth and the dark bleeds onto your skin. Everything goes blurry and then stark, blinding, burning white, and hissing syllables tumble from your blackened tongue. There is a scream that could be anyone's, and a stab of sheer, unadulterated agony through your entire body; for the first time in your dreams you feel a need to breathe but it's impossible.

A second voice joins in your hissing and without communication, you build the throedark incantation to a crescendo and spit a final sickening word, and everything stops.

You open your eyes to blackness, but not their blackness, and for that you are grateful. Feferi's dead eyes glow brightly in the midnight, shaped with tired troubles.

You cup her face in both hands and kiss her lips that taste still like decay, and now, faintly, of grimdark throes.

"Do you see, now?" you ask softly. You don't know what tone you are using and neither does she, but she is numb to your touch and closes her eyes.

You wake up abruptly, on the floor, surrounded by concerned companions.

 "What the fuck, Lalonde?"

 There is a chorus of questions and concerns. You must have thrashed yourself to the floor in your sleep. And you probably went full-on grimdark for good measure.

 You sigh and somehow manage to wave them off, and bury your head in your knees.

 They are back.

 They are ready to claim their precious few, their precious two.

 It will be a long time before you sleep again.

 

* * *

 

 

"I would be most grateful if you would brew me a cup as shell."

 It is considerably early in the morning, earlier than you are usually up, and there is a considerably thick book sprawled open in your lap. You don't raise your head. Your blonde hair is beginning to curl at the ends just like your mother's, you notice, but the length is good for obscuring your face.

 You finished an entire three books last night. At this rate you're going to run out of them far too soon.

 You hear the soft clink of cups stop abruptly, then start again. Points for his reaction, though perhaps he's become used to your sudden switches between alright and very, very sick.

 "You want some anchovies in that, Ariel?"

 You smirk and feel the skin on your face grow taut. "No, the usual will be fine."

 "As if I can even remember what the everloving fuck that is."

 You turn a page. "Black, Strider. You will have to do better if you're attempting any jabs this morning."

 You both know that you don't drink black coffee for no reason.

 "Nice to see your monstrous face conscious at this hour," he notes.

 More prodding. Not really subtle but you award him points just the same.

 "Mm, yes. Feferi had some business of her own to attend to."

 "Yeah, I bet. Fishface has all the bitches these days."

 The mug clinks down on the coffee table, and Dave sits next to where you are curled up on the couch. As usual, he sprawls, creating the image of carelessness that you know to be quite the elaborate façade.

You lift the cup by the ear, lowering your novel and taking a long sip that scalds your tongue. That's alright, the pain will distract you from falling asleep. The smell of instant coffee is strong and aromatic, and it is shitty coffee indeed but you wouldn't have it any other way.

"Hey, Lalonde."

"Mm?"

"Protip: either cut the crap or stop making it so obvious that shit is going down in dreamville with Princess Fishface."

You give him a practiced, bored glance and take another sip, your eyes roaming the room in a clever impersonation of a roll. "I'll choose the latter, thanks."

"You're not fooling anyone."

"I give all of you moor credit than that," you insist. "I just don't particularly  care."

"Nah, you just think you're too good for us."

His voice is even, but the soft twang you detect only makes itself known when he's particularly pissed. You close your book and lay it neatly on the table, reclining against the armrest of the sofa with your mug in your hands.

 "Hardly."

 "Oh, come on, Lalonde. You are a raging bitch who puts the 'psycho' in 'psychobabble.' Your shit is wrecked--you just don't want to admit it--you never do. You got enough balls to think you got it all worked out, huh?"

 You simply sip.

 "Dave, you are being dramatic."

 "Why'd you let her?"

 "Pardon?"

 "Why did you let Fishface save you when you were so fucking set on burying yourself in the tentacle-y bullshit?"

 "She has a name, you min-now."

 "Scrap the goddamn fish puns and give me a straight answer for once, would you?"

 You stare into your coffee, nearly as black as Feferi's hair, as your lipstick, as the abyss at the bottom of Alternia's ocean, as the shadowy grip of the Circle.

 "Because…"

 Because she is one of precious few.

 Because she doesn't understand yet, but she _knows._

 Because you're going to return the favor.

 "Because she was the only one who could."

 

* * *

 

 

You are one of precious few who have decided to fight, and that does not entail a sickdeath cycle of coffee and nerves and passing out cold. You stare at your bed for a long, long time, your room a cobwebby mess; it has been so long since you last cleaned. You sit on it, eventually, a cozy queen with lavender sheets that has always somehow reminded you of home, as silly as the sentiment is.

This bed, this home, was an enemy not so long ago. It is a saddening thought that two concepts so distant from each other could be associated with the same inanimate object.

You are distracting yourself, you know. You breathe--in, out, in, out--set your dream journal on the edge of the bed and carefully curl yourself under the covers.

You stare at the ceiling for an hour and thirty-two minutes and you can't sleep, because you know what awaits.

You hear a little creak from the door, but don't look. There is a low whistle and a scratchy voice that carries across the empty-dark expanse and says, "For fuck's sake, Lalonde, pick up a copy of Good Housekeeping sometime. Never pegged you for a slob."

You think of propping yourself up to give him your patented incredulous eyebrow, but it would take so much energy. You are so, so tired, so tired and you can't even sleep.

You simply turn your head, your hair splayed on the pillow, and look at him. Your eyes are violet and when you exhale you drain all walls from them, and Dave freezes as he watches your defenses melt away. There is something raw and burning here now, something so honest and human it hurts, something so real it feels just the opposite because you are so fucking out of touch. Dave watches massacred gods die in your eyes and he falls silent for once.

He drops his gaze, and like a ritual, steps out of his shoes as he walks across the room with remarkable poise considering the situation. He casually removes his shades, folds the arms in neatly and sets them on top of your dream journal, and then he climbs into bed with you and curls his lanky arms around you. You release a breath you didn't realize was caged in your chest and feel your muscles fill back up with the tension of barriers maintained, of fortresses guarded, of secrets kept.

"Right here, you flighty broad. Go play little mermaid with your girlfriend while we get our motherfuckin' slumber party on."

You press a thankful kiss on his shoulder and just before you fall into a deep and horrifying sleep, you whisper, "Do not let me kill you."

You hope to any god but them that he has the sense to leave you the second you are out.

For you are one of precious few capable of murdering her brother in her sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

When you wake up, darkness fills your lungs.

You remember the breath of fresh sea air that Feferi brought with her that first time, and exhale black smoke with quiet wistfulness.

The first time you met her, she rescued you from the dark.

Now she brings the darkness with her.

But she is here with you now, in this abstract and indifferent dimness, and you reach out to touch her. Your long nails scrape her skin before you feel it on your fingertips.

"Feferi," you say. It comes out through a distorted filter that you recognize all too well, and you swallow the dark in your throat and know that you've once again adopted the broodfester tongues as your native language.

Eyes open, white and grimdark and dead, and freezing cold waves of blackness ooze against your fingertips.

You are one of precious few. You are precious two, and this language for its decay may as well be your very own.

There is a sickening comfort in the fact that she is the only one who could possibly understand these hissing blooddark words.

"Rose." It comes through the same filter, a filter that sounds so heartbreakingly like she is talking to you through the ocean.

"They are not patient gods."

"They are knot," she agrees. Her voice is subdued; she is still. For the first time ever, she actually acts like the dead troll girl she is.

You repeat the question that she never answered.

"Do you see?"

"I've always been able to sea," she says. "But not like you See."

Something about the tongues lets you hear the capitalization, her invocation of your aspect, and for once you regret that you are a Seer and not a Witch. Perhaps if Feferi had been able to See, things would be different.

 You nod, a gesture visible only by the movement of your glowing eyes, and you feel for her fingers. Your hand has always fit so perfectly into hers, knuckle for knuckle and nail for nail, and something about your mutual grimdark auras is magnetic and excruciatingly painful. You don't care, and neither does she. There is something about breathing numb blackness that makes pain seem distant and insignificant, and right now it is.

 You both are silent for long moments save for the soft, creeping crackle of your auras and the whispers that surround you.

 "Rose. I can't--I can't protect you anemonemore."

 Figures that Feferi would still be making awful fish puns while heartbreak is written all over her.

 "I know. It was never a permanent solution, Feferi."

 Her hand squeezes yours violently, her claws tearing your skin without her realizing it.

 "I just--I thought that they would--that you could--"

 You free your bleeding hand to wind your arm around her shoulders and pull her close. She leans her head on your shoulder and her hair feels more like sentient tendrils than troll-girl tresses.

 "I know."

 "I don't undersand," she whispers brokenly. "They've always been so kind!"

 "That's because you are their princess," you say, "and I am their pawn."

 "It's not anyfin like that, Rose!"

 "Then you tell me."

 Feferi is silent.

 "Even I can't imagine how their minds work," you say softly. "I don't know the full extent of their plans, their pleas, their intentions, or their…"

 You struggle for a substitute for the thing that springs into your mind, and though your vocabulary is thousands of words deep, you cannot find it.

 "Hunger."

 Hearing her say it is twice as painful because she's tearing her own ideals to pieces instead of letting you do it for her.

 "Yes."

 "They're not evil."

 "Nothing truly is," you say with knowledge deeper than any teenage girl should have of the boundaries of right and wrong.

 "Rose."

 "Mm?" You bury your fingers in her hair, and it pulls at you.

 "Do you blame them?"

 You think for a long, long moment. Feferi is right; the Circle is not evil, even in the most black and white sense of the term. Misguided by their own designs, yes. Manipulative and scheming, yes. Imbued with dubious intentions, yes. Desperate--very. Hungry…

 Almost certainly.

 But they are beyond human capacities for feelings or morality or logic, existing in a plane far warped and elevated and seemingly primitive. How can a being be considered evil when it lacks the conviction to know what evil is?

 "No," you say finally. Blame is not something you are fond of spreading; you prefer to keep most of it to yourself. After all, if you had been less arrogant and naïve, the horroterrors would never have wrapped their flagella lovingly around your limbs.

 But Feferi--she was born like this. She has never known a life without them. A god of the Furthest Ring for a lusus--how could she ever have escaped them?

 How _will_  she escape them?

 The thought fills you with sudden terror; your fingers fist in Feferi's hair, pulling on it hard, and you almost don't notice her speaking again.

 "Do you blame me?"

 "No." It is instinctive, like two lightning-quick taps of letters on a keyboard, and you could not have said it fast enough.

 Even the gentlest of kisses burns like fire in these magnetic dark states of yours, as if the terrors themselves see fit to mock you--only you know better than to think they would condescend to such pedantry. Feferi takes it as an invitation to kiss you harder, to bite and lick and claw and tear, and you let her and peck away her tears in the breaths. You know that for the moment, bizarre as it is, she waxes black as this darkness surrounding you for the Circle that has destroyed the two of you, and you are the closest she can get to hurting them.

 She is always pretty, sweet and round-faced and elegant, but you have to admit that she is one of precious few to wear her momentary hatred so beautifully.

 

* * *

 

 

You wake up still in Dave's too-casual embrace and stare silently at his chest for long moments, refusing to let yourself bury your face there like you desperately want to. You are disgusted that you crave touch that does not singe with dark, a touch that was _hers_  not so very long ago.

 He notices that you're conscious almost immediately but doesn't say anything.

 You are starting to feel vaguely like you did on Derse in its crash-course towards the Green Sun, but there's just one problem.

 "Dave."

 "Yeah?"

 "How do you bid farewell to a being who is already dead?"

 Dave doesn't have an answer.

 How could he?

 He's never walked shadowdark dreamdead paths with the other  half of a precious few.

 

* * *

 

 

Every battle merits its preparations, and the one you feel coming a mile off is no exception. You take each step with utmost care and every breath is slow and grateful.

 You put a fresh coat of paint on your nails (tyrian purple). You make up the most pretentiously sugary and delicious cup of shitty coffee you can manage and let it scald the back of your throat on its way down. You wear the very first outfit Kanaya ever made for you, even though you've lost too much weight for it to fit properly. You reread your favorite novel on the meteor and rememorize lines from your favorite poetry. You finally beat the only video game you've taken much liking to, a fantasy RPG with heavy gothic themes. You play your most haunting refrain on your violin and organize your mountainous collection of unclaimed knitting projects. You wander the hallways one or two last times, fingers trailing along the walls, memorizing the layouts and the rooms where everyone sleeps soundly at night.

 You examine every bloodstain that no careful ministrations could clean from the floor completely, circling with morbid abandon the places that each troll died. There might as well be white chalk outlines. You go so far as to lay down on the stain of tyrian purple and remember how to breathe.

 You carefully nick a keepsake from the modest hoards of odds and ends belonging to each resident of the meteor: a spare pair of shades, a ridiculous dragon plush, a jade-green scarf, a shitty xenoromance novel, a dusty old keyboard, and after some hesitation, even an old colorful club.

 (You figure you're going to need at least a little batshit serial killer instinct, after all.)

 Contrary to the beliefs of many, you were never an occultist or a witch; you just happened to like horrifying Lovecraftian beasts. But tonight you arrange all of your pilfered keepsakes around you, a circle like a barrier that you know will never keep away the dark. You leave a black lipstick stain as a suicide note on the cover of your dream journal and lay it on your chest, hoping that perhaps all of the worthless sweet nothings you wrote will give you strength as you pull your covers up to your chin.

 And you wait. You are the last bastion of _precious few_ , the last hope of a precious two, and you wait to be claimed.

 

* * *

 

 

It doesn't take nearly so long as you thought it would-- _hoped it would_ \--to open your eyes to blackness for the first time.

Three, the magic number, the terrible number. You know with a sudden, symbolic penchant for logistics that there is no third time escaping for a few that is only a pair. There's not enough life to sacrifice between you for any of that.

You feel the burning inky blackness falling off your skin, but tonight it is less like a crackling fire and more like a carcinogenic muck that drags at your limbs. There are no weapons in these kinds of dreams; those are piled in a perfect circle around your supine body in your bed in the waking world. The only kind of attacks here are mental, and you find this highly disconcerting.

If you could stab holes into every single one of these dark gods one by one until they fell to pieces, you would do it in a heartbeat, misguided or not. They want you, and with bemusement you find that it is more important that they want her. And there is one thing amongst that which they want that they cannot have.

You will yourself to breathe the name. _Feferi,_  and it bubbles out of your throat, no-- _drips_ , thick and viscous.  You feel a rage as bright-white as everything around you is vacuous black, and this time you spit her name, in tongues all yours and none of theirs:

" _Feferi._ "

Cold hands burn black-hot on your face, and her dead eyes haunt just bright enough for you to see.  She is close enough for you to feel the tendrils of black that creep in and out of her mouth just as breath once did, and you place a hand flat on her chest to stop her before she envelops your mouth with her lips and chokes you dead with the grimdark that seethes everywhere inside her.

"Feferi," you choke out again. Your tongue is thick and burns like someone's torn it out and thrown it into a fire; the Noble Circle rebelling against your commoner's tongue, you think. You've never been able to speak anything under than broodfester tongues when your skin goes gray and you pick up a sickly aura, but for your favorite Witch, you can do anything.

You can take down an entire plane of writhing tentacular swallowing terrorbeasts with your hands tied behind your back, for her.

She hisses back at you, your name in the tongues you try so hard to stifle. Her hands stray from your cheeks, slide down your neck to your narrow shoulders, her claws raking mercilessly across your flesh, her palms leaving scarring burns in their wake. You feel each agony with an excruciating amount of detail; you gasp for breath that you cannot find. She leans in again and your hands jerk to her face, holding her firmly in your hands, the white of her eyes blurring.

" _They could have made it so easy_ ," she purrs to you. " _Why, Rose? Why do you run from them? You know it's useless. You know they want you. They want you like no one before has ever wanted you, Rose. They love you. They need you. No one else can say that._ "

You're not quite sure why you resist her tongues; it's a matter of principle, you suppose, and quite the foolish one. But you whisper, just barely, "You can."

And Feferi chuckles, and her laughter does not bubble out of her like it used to. It _slithers. "You know nothing, you stupid child. I am them. They are me. Do you see? You are meant to belong to them, to us."_

Your fingers against her cheeks curl inward, gouge cruel marks in her face, and she doesn't notice.

 "No," you hiss, nearly incomprehensible except for the fact that you know she'd understand you if all you did was think the word. "You belong to them, perhaps. By… virtue… of your existence. But they're not going to have you."

 And yet, there is no other fate for the precious few, no matter how hard the _precious_  part stabs through your heart when you look at her.

You close the distance between your mouths, and the last thing you think (sadly) is that she doesn't taste like decay anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

Dave Strider stumbles into your room hours later only to find the words **BURN MY BODY** scrawled across every inch of wall space in black ink as tacky to the touch as blood.

 No one finds the little scrawl in the back of your dream diary that reads, purple ink in thick, sloppy, bold blots, **_I SAVED HER._**

 And if you were alive--if you had a consciousness left that did not belong to the Circle--you would be glad that no one finds it.

 It would soil your memory if they knew that, in the end, you became a liar.

 It was that last kiss that told you that the precious few always do.


End file.
